What’s going on with the road in Bolívar? Jorge Nevado, civil engineer, explained that the culture of low maintenance has contributed to the deterioration of roads in Guayana. Roads designed 15 years ago have now been in service for three decades without optimal maintenance.
Puerto Ordaz. Every week there is a new report of culvert or section of road or bridge collapse which isolate several sectors of the Bolivarian State. The problem comes down to lack of maintenance. This has led to the road in the entity being at risk even for the transport of food in the municipalities.
So far this year, they’re reporting more than 10 collapses of bridges, culverts and sections of highways and main roads of the entity therefore the Guyanese marvel. What’s going on with the road in Bolívar?
Civil engineer Jorge Nevado, head of the department of geometry and roads of the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), nucleus Guayana, explained that There are rigid and flexible pavements. These are the ones used in Venezuela, and their designs last 15 years.
“At the time of their commissioning, the pavement is excellent and in 15 years it should deteriorate under the effect of rubber, bad weather, water, rain, sun. All this, plus the load, causes the pavement to break. If you don’t maintain it, it should break down in 15 years. What is happening? Most of our tracks were designed in the 1970s. In other words, 15 years turned into 30 and 40 years, and the maintenance we did was not adequate,” he said. he explains.
In this sense, the plan called “part of the asphalt” of the governments in power have been only “rags of hot water”. This is due to the fact that a real maintenance management is not carried out, despite the regulations in force in Venezuela, and with international standards.
the south in danger
Chest 10 repair is a promise from the administration of former governor Francisco Rangel Gómez. This road artery that connects Bolívar to Brazil, despite the repairs, has several of its sections that give way every year.
Social media videos certify how passenger vehicles and heavy commercial vehicles are injured in the middle of the mud that today occupies what was once a road.
solitary confinement affects agricultural producers for the transfer of their products. The only alternative routes are trails that cross mining camps, with no security for passers-by.
Trunk 10 was designed for a low traffic road. Suddenly started the boom of the Arco Minero, begins to transit heavy loads and, of course, the roadway suffers. Trunk 10 was a more touristy route, the trucks were mostly food. This added to the fact that the gutters and drains are not cleaned, all of this starts to cause damage,” added Nevado.
The mayor of El Callao, Coromoto Lugo, calculated that 600 heavy goods vehicles circulate daily from the 27 alliances miners who support the community.
Regarding the maintenance work to be carried out, pointed out that in pavement management, there is the index manual pavement condition.
“There are 21 types of failures registered in the international field, which say if it is serious, if it is light, moderate, and the cause which is at the origin. Knowing that the pavement has a “crocodile skin”, that it is already deteriorated, the solution cannot be a simple layer of asphalt. It is necessary to break, remove, reach the base, clean and put a new layer of asphalt. Obviously assessing that this happened because there was a greater load, if there was water that was generating pressure. The manuals exist, the problem is that we don’t use them”, says Nevado.
road disaster
The road disaster in Bolívar includes the bridges that collapsed in the middle of the rains, like the one in the Curaima sector, a peasant colony in the municipality of Padre Chien. Since its construction in the government of Luis Herrera Campins, the maintenance has been assumed by agricultural producers.
With the collapse, on August 15 of this year, and for more than a month without a government solution, the community decided to build one out of wood. On the road to San Martín de Turumbán, municipality of Sifontes, They also made a vehicle pass with logs, as they recently applied at kilometer 42 of trunk 10.
“We are producers of milk, cheese, cattle, vegetables. We were losing products and we had no government solution. The alternative routes are equally or worse in deterioration, you cannot travel,” said an agricultural producer from Curaima.
The other collapsed bridges are: Los Aceiticos (Ciudad Bolívar); Guacamayo, in the municipality of Sucre, or the collapse of the sewers in the sector of Las Bonitas (municipality of Cedeño) or Primero de Mayo, in Ciudad Bolívar, three months after its rehabilitation- Likewise, the impassability of the main lines 19 and 16, and a section of the Villa Lola-El Palmar highway.
Regarding the sewer in the Primero de Mayo sector, commonly known as the bridge, Nevado explained that it is an old sewer.
“She was one of the Aussies. It was a steel culvert that rusted, it must have lost some material, there was a passage of water, and that raised the fines and the culvert gave way. Now I don’t know what work has been done on the Primero de Mayo sewers. Guyana culverts were made from Australian culverts, which are metallic. With water they oxidize, lose material and in the end the layers give way. They also fail because the gutters are not cleaned, water tends to seep from another side and they also deteriorate. It’s a maintenance thing.”
What to do?
On the solutions for road recovery in Bolívar, engineer Jorge Nevado says that for trunk 10, for example, an assessment of the vehicle is required.
A vehicle count to define which vehicles are circulating, since with this it is possible to design a roadway and its thickness. You also have to see the drains, the cleaning of the drainage areas, how much water is coming in, these are data that we need,” he said.
“We know that conditions have changed. We are three years old with a daughter effect, which is not normal, it was always a dry year and a rainy year, and at the moment there have been three rainy years. This affects everything from the headers and pipe entry. If they are dirty, it causes problems, it drags materials, they block and water starts to cross the road, eroding it,” he added.
Maintenance as key
The road maintenance report, prepare by CAF’s Sectoral Analysis and Programming Department, recalls that “a pavement will inevitably deteriorate due to the fatigue produced by the repetition of loads generated by traffic. However, and given a certain level of demand or traffic, the condition of the pavement in service at any time will also depend on the maintenance activities that are carried out, hence the importance of the application in time timely preventive tasks.
There is also the importance of corrective actions (repairing the damaged) and conservation work or prevention (preventing harm from occurring or minimizing and delaying it).
“The plans must combine preventive and corrective activities, having as medium and long-term objective a greater incidence of preventive activities compared to corrective actions; that is, a tendency towards conservation rather than maintenance,” the report states.
On the other hand, maintenance and rehabilitation actions are not just limited to patching or surface asphalt.
The maintenance and rehabilitation manual for flexible pavements indicates that minor maintenance involves: sealing cracks, sealing, localized asphalt joint, localized grading and localized milling and texturing.
Among the acts of major maintenance is: surface treatments, asphalt layers, removal by crushing and recycling.
And among the additional actions generally necessary in urban roads, there are the leveling of manholes, the leveling of drains, the supply of grilles and metal frames, and small additional works (demolition and construction of sidewalks, curbs).
Investment without liability
The question of roads in Bolívar has been discussed in the Legislative Council of the State of Bolívar, as well as in the municipal chambers. Several additional credits have been approved for repairs, but to date there is no accountability or inquiry for irregular work.
For the repair and improvement of the road axis of the Los Aceiticos Bridge, in Ciudad Bolívar, 355,500.00 bolivars have been approved.
The first stage of the Sucre Bridge (Primero de Mayo) repairs had a credit of Bs. 194,910.00. In September, Bs. 395,492.09 was allocated for the second stage. This was the case of the bridge reopened on July 5. It had a partial collapse on September 6, and on October 5, it completely collapsed.
For repairs and improvements on trunk 10, Between February and August, CLEB approved two additional credits for 250,000.00 and 240,000.00 bolivars.
The opposition bloc CLEB has requested an interpellation of those responsible for the works in the Primero de Mayo sector. However, the ruling bloc refused the motion. Legislator Héctor Barrios said that, therefore, they will go to the prosecutor’s office and the comptroller’s office for the loss of the resources invested.
Repairs
The government, for its part, has resumed work on the sewer that crosses the Primero de Mayo sector.
Regarding the collapse of a culvert at kilometer 42 of Troncal 10, the mayor of Sifontes, Vicente Rojas, said: “We have 26 hours of continuous work. We haven’t abandoned the safe”.
He explained that the sap was more than 12 meters long, nine meters wide and eight deep. The repair work includes the installation of 20 48-inch pipes for the sewer line.
“It’s not about hot water wipes, we take on these tasks with the complexity and responsibility of them,” Rojas said. In turn, it reports on the restoration of the passage for light vehicles and transhipment.